All The Damn Time

Student innocently posts a command to read a test file, professor immediately sees through the scheme. Classic cat-and-mouse game between students trying to peek at test cases and professors trying to maintain academic integrity. The command would display the hidden test file that the autograder uses to evaluate submissions. Nice try, kid - you weren't the first CS student to think of this hack, and you won't be the last. The professor's deadpan response is giving me flashbacks to every time I thought I was being clever in college.

Nothing teaches you like a production server on fire at 2 AM. That tiny stack of theory books? That's your CS degree. The practice pile? That's your first year on the job. But that towering monument of green books? That's the knowledge you've gained by accidentally dropping the production database, pushing to main on Friday, or forgetting that arrays start at zero for the 500th time. The most valuable developer skills aren't taught in bootcamps—they're forged in the flames of catastrophic failure. My resume says "10 years of experience" but it should really say "10 years of increasingly spectacular mistakes."

The brutal truth nobody asked for but everyone needed to hear. When you assign blame for that spaghetti code disaster to the innocent intern who just started last week, you're not being clever—you're just being a jerk with commit access. Nothing says "I'm professionally insecure" quite like making someone else the scapegoat for your 3 AM caffeine-fueled coding abomination. The git blame command exists for justice, not for your workplace pranks.

That heart-stopping moment when you deliberately delete some code instead of copying it (because who needs backups, right?)... only to suddenly realize you actually needed that code. Then—like a digital necromancer—you hit Ctrl+Z and your supposedly dead code resurrects itself. The emotional reunion that follows is worthy of a Hollywood tearjerker. Your cursor hovers there, trembling with gratitude that undo buffers exist. Without Ctrl+Z, half of all code would permanently vanish into the void during refactoring sessions.

Content When you attempt to use breakpoints for debugging. Why are you running?

Content Closing all the tabs after solving a pesky programming bug